Reverend Leah Daughtry is a renowned activist, preacher, and political strategist. She has held positions in the US Department of Labor, Congress, and served as the CEO of the Democratic National Convention in both 2008 and 2016, making her the first person in the Democratic Party to hold this position twice. She currently serves as president of On These Things.
When did you first develop an interest in politics?
My interest in politics started with my family. We were always at a rally, or a march, or talking with elected representatives, so I don’t remember a time when politics was not part of my life. It’s been a fixture for so many years. For me personally, the first real political thing I remember was that we took annual trips to Albany to meet our local representative. I also grew up during the age of Watergate, so we watched the hearings everyday and had a very clear and real sense of much larger-scale politics.
How have your religious beliefs related to your career?
My faith and what I believe really is what drives my participation in the political sphere, because my faith and my values say that God’s intent is that we live whole and happy lives. Part of that includes making sure that everyone is fed, housed, clothed, and treated with respect. I advocate for policies that allow people to not be homeless and to have clean air and clean water, regardless of zip code, ethnicity, or gender. I think those things are part of the gospel, and there are a number of ways to live that out. For me, it’s ensuring that the people who are elected into office embody those values.
How important is the correlation between the beliefs of our elected officials and the politics that we see in our day to day lives?
It’s less about what faith you are and more about what your value system is. I want elected officials to come to office with a set of values, and I want to know what those values are because that will tell me how you intend to govern and what kind of policies you’re going to pursue.
Do you believe that the Democratic Party has done enough to support the African-American community?
It always makes me a little bit angry when I hear people talk about black voters being taken for granted, because the implication is that black voters are uninformed beings who just go to the booth and vote down the party line. I think that really discredits us. I think the reason that the Democratic party has been able to garner so much of the black vote for so long is because we listen, we pay attention, and we know that the Democratic Party’s policies are good for our community. They may not be perfect; no policy is perfect. But among the choices that are set before us at election time, they are far more advantageous to us than anything that the other party is advancing.
So then can we hold Democrats accountable for the standard of living people of color now face?
I think you hold every elected official accountable, regardless of party, because they work for us. They are our employees. Every voter has to hold their elected officials accountable and openly be able to test these officials. It is not enough for us to vote for people and then sit on our couches and wait to see what they’re going to do. We have to pay attention to the people we have employed to work on our behalf and to make our opinions known. You have a right and a responsibility to hold them accountable for the job that you have employed them to do.
As a woman, how does today’s political rhetoric about gender affect your views politically?
There is a book called All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men. When you say “women are voting a certain way,” they mean white women. When you say “black people are doing a certain thing,” they mean black men, and so where is the black woman’s voice in the current? We are overlooked, dismissed, talked about but not talked to. I think that all surfaces in this election in particular. So I’m very consciously aware of the place and the role of black women because we are, as I said, the largest and most consistent voting bloc in the country. We wield tremendous power at the voting booth. So the rhetoric in this cycle has been quite interesting to me as a black person, but also to me as a woman. Why is Donald Trump’s language excusable because it happened in the locker room? I don’t care where it happened, it’s not acceptable. I think for many women in the country – black, white, brown – for every community, it’s a moment in time we’re seeing women say, “No, this type of banter, wherever it happens, is not acceptable and I will not be silenced about my displeasure.” We will not go back to the days when we were fighting for the right to control our own bodies.
What do you think about those who claim that the political correctness of today is so stringent that it infringes upon freedom of speech?
I’m not a big one for political correctness because it means that there is a political incorrectness. But I do think that if we are going to grow together as a nation and as a community, we have to allow people to say things that may not be couched in the right language. If you can’t have an honest conversation where you’re just asking a question, then you can never really get to understand that difference is not a problem, difference is a strength. If you don’t have a safe space where you can ask the questions, then you back down into your corner. I think we have now reached a place in America where those kinds of safe places are hard to find. And so you finally say “I don’t know what to say so I’ll just shut up.” That’s never good if we’re going to grow together as a community.